Thursday
The only thing I listened to during the daytime was that
thing I’m writing the big piece about. It demands close
scrutiny. Oh yeah, and the radio.
Only then somebody pointed me in the direction of an mp3 of
David Bowie singing “Under Pressure,” which might
have been cool, but he had one of his backing vocalists filling
in for Freddie Mercury, and there is no substitute for Freddie
Mercury. Much less somebody who’s working the shrill-vibrato
end of the street, as has been de rigeur for backing vocalists
since ’86 or so. Anyhow, this made me wonder, for the thousandth
time: did Hot Space, the Queen album that has “Under Pressure” on
it, deserve the beating it took when it came out? ‘Cause
the critics were ruthless to it, if memory serves (which is doesn’t
always, admittedly). So I went to the iTunes store and there
it was, and I’ll bet I could have gotten a used vinyl copy
of it practically anywhere if I’d been willing to wait,
but part of what makes listening to music exciting is urgency,
and so I bought it. It’s downloading right now. Will report
back later.
6:01 p.m. On the way back from a delicious Chinese dinner,
heard some Mirah on the radio. I do love Mirah so much. And Phil
Elvrum’s production, impossible to miss, especially on
the drums: his love is like, “woah.” Not only could
Phil Elvrum take Brian Wilson in a battle of the gorgeous-sound-palette
guys: he could take Brian Wilson mach ’67 in said battle.
Word.
6:17 p.m. and I’m four songs deep into Hot Space. While
it’s not the underappreciated monolith that I’d secretly
hoped it was, the opening “Staying Power” is quite
great, and the bass line to “Body Language” almost
makes up for the nagging little matter of there not actually
being an actual song in there. But it may be that by this point
Queen were wondering whether or not reppin’ for songs wasn’t
quickly becoming a dead end. If so, they were years ahead of
the curve (be quiet, disco lovers, it was never actually that
big). Certainly if you stripped Freddie Mercury from half of
these songs and replaced the missing parts with disaffected German
voices sing-speaking eventless narratives, it’d be electro
night down at the Ice Room.
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